Tag Archives: wind controller

Once Upon A Time…..there was a great site called EWI-EVI.com. There was a wealth of information on wind controllers and stuff. That site now seems dead. In fact, there seems little movement right now in the whole EWI sphere. Akai seems to have stopped with the software updates (not that it needs it) but things like the Vyzex Editor seem to work OK on the latest version of OS X, but the software itself has not had an update in 5 years…….yikes!

There is a project called ewitool which looks very nice, but it only works on Windows and Linux…….no Mac. It seems to be a better editor than Vyzex is/was……and at least it is getting updated more frequently.

Some other sites that are EWI related or focused:

Saxophonist John Isley has a site called ewilogic.com which is an excellent source of using Logic and an Akai EWI together. Some amazing environments (think Michael Brecker’s Logic setup), tutorials and more. HIGHLY recommend you check it out.

The other site to check out is EWI Reason Sounds which Chris Vollstadt has put together. Simply put…..it is amazing. If you play EWI (USB or the 4000S) you will want to buy Reason to use with it. He has tons of patches he has made, tutorials, tips, tricks……basically everything. Hands down, it is probably the best EWI related site I have seen.

Sadly though, that is about it. If anyone knows of some other resources for EWIs please feel free to post about it.

UPDATE: Oh, seems I missed a couple. Thanks to Bret for the heads up. Check out his Windcontroller links for some additional ones.

“The META-EWI is a modified EWI (Akai’s Electric Wind Instrument) to which was added a whole new set of controllers based on sensor technologies, specifically eight continuous controllers and 16 digital switches. These clearly succeed at stretching the expressiveness and the range of musical gestures found on the original instrument allowing the musician to have a more complete and far reaching control of a great variety of meaningful musical parameters.”

“Developed by composer and researcher Tomás Henriques, the instrument mixes computer music software, sensor technologies and flexible hand/arm gestures to generate rich, complex sounds.” My question is why? So we can do more Zen type music? Why do all these “demos” of new controllers and stuff always have like an atmosphere drone? I would have been impressed if this guy busted out some changes and played a chorus or two of “Autumn Leaves” or something. But no, we get F-ing drone Zen music. Another Eigenharp type device. Whoohoo!